[1]
Quebec Social Science and Canadian Indigenous Peoples :
An Overview of Research Trends, 1960-1990
1
INTRODUCTION
This monograph attempts to provide an overview of the work of social scientists from Québec institutions directed at the indigenous peoples of Québec and Canada during the period from 1960 to 1990. We undertook the formidable task of preparing this overview from a history of science point of view. To this end, it was necessary to examine an enormous amount of data in a thousand titles of the research literature, and most importantly, to consider them from a number of perspectives in order to reveal the social, political and historical circumstances that prevailed over those three decades.
Earlier work by Marc-Adélard Tremblay (1984) had indicated, for the mid-1980s, the kinds of sociopolitical conditions connected with the decrease and shifting focus of university-based research in the northern part of Québec. However, a better understanding is needed of the many structural changes that occurred within Native studies during that period of time. This need became apparent to us during the course of our analytical undertaking. For example, we tried unsuccessfully to classify the various research titles by using the customary ethnological categories in traditional bibliographies, such as those prepared by Richard Dominique (1976) and Richard Dominique and Jean-Guy Desch6nes (1980) on the Montagnais-Naskapis or by Tremblay (1982) and Dominique (1986) on Québec Native peoples. The inappropriateness of the categories used in such critical bibliographies is the result of changing research patterns and institutional affiliations. These changes stem as much from the way institutions are structured as from emerging disciplinary practices, such as the entry of researchers with different backgrounds (demographers, education specialists, etc.) into the field of Amerindian studies, or the employment of field researchers who have no institutional affiliation as freelance contractors or special advisors-and even their personal characteristics of age and sex.
Before proceeding further, we must say a word about the limited number of references accompanying this paper. Since it was not feasible to include all titles that constitute the body of data, we had to be selective and refer only to those most significant. The more extensive bibliography can be consulted at the Inuit and Circumpolar Study Group (GENIC) at Laval University, where it is a part of a monograph on Amerindian studies in Northern Québec (Lévesque and Tremblay, 1992).
This paper has two sections. The first deals with the categories used in describing the literature, providing, so to Speak, a schematic overview of the research chronology, the scientific status of documents, their geographical context and cultural affiliation, the gender of authors, and the thematic organization. Regarding the scientific status of documents, one innovative feature is the inclusion of what is sometimes referred to as "grey' literature, which is often unknown to researchers or at least difficult to obtain.
The second section covers a wide range of topics and reveals the dynamism at work in the scientific process. It addresses, in the following order : linguistic and chronological perspectives ; the state of knowledge regarding Aboriginal cultures, power structures and administrative procedures ; the [2] economic sphere ; the health status of Aboriginal populations and their use of the non‑Aboriginal (in this case, the Canadian or Québec) health system ; human and environmental ecology ; women's studies ; scientific contributions originating from field studies carried out by non‑conventional "northern" disciplines ; the theory and method of Native studies, and the socio-
|